Excerpt from “Model Mutiny: Artist Anthony Le’s Just Art” by QUỲNH H. VÕ in CUNY Forum

“Their painting, “Open Mic,” rises from these musings and the currents of a turbulent world. The title—a sharp play on “military-industrial complex”—captures their conflicted love for D.C., a city of liberal promise yet the heart of power without voting rights. Federal contractors loom everywhere, feeding the military-industrial machinery through weapons sales, a presence that cannot be ignored. The ongoing genocide in Palestine sears their conscience, compelling them to confront the United States’ role in exacerbating the massacre. In this act of creation, they rebel and refuse to be silent before injustice, a fierce, living embodiment of their “Model Mutiny” philosophy.

“Open Mic” depicts an interior scene, their bedroom, with their partner Ashley above them, and themself below. The central, absurd image of the Washington Monument “opening up” and “firing a missile into the world” is born from a place of dark humor, a surrealist response to the unbearable. “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,” they muse. The painting is rich with missile imagery, juxtaposed with elements of Vietnamese culture—a red envelope, ancestral portraits on the wall. It embodies the contradictions they feel: the sexual, pleasurable act of firing missiles intertwined with their horrify-ing destructive power. Amidst this, beloved scenes of D.C. like Meridian Hill Park peek through, all enveloped in the cloud of the military industrial complex. It is a raw confrontation with the disturbing realities that permeate their environment, rendered with a profound melancholy for what humanity perpetrates.”